Gift of $200 million is Baylor's largest ever: Donation to benefit school of social work

April 20, 2010

Baylor University has announced the largest gift in the Baptist school’s history—an estate provision estimated at $200 million from an anonymous donor. Much of the gift will benefit the Baylor School of Social Work.

The announcement came less than three weeks after the school’s board of regents announced it had selected former Whitewater special prosecutor and current Pepperdine University Law School dean Kenneth Starr to be the next Baylor president. However, there is no indication that Starr’s selection—controversial among Baylor alumni and supporters—had anything to do with the donation.

The deferred gift is designated for the School of Social Work as well as medical research in Baylor’s College of Arts and Sciences and for other programs. It is the second-largest donation ever made to a Texas college or university and ranks among the top 20 private gifts made to higher education in the U.S., according to the most recent data reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

A news release from Baylor simply identified the donor as “a Baylor graduate whose family has a history of providing gifts to the university supporting programs that are both innovative and have high potential to significantly advance the field of knowledge and experience in diseases, disorders, care, treatment and other issues associated with aging.”

As a provision of the donor’s estate, a foundation will be established at the time of the donor’s death. –Associated Baptist Press